Maybe you’ve read that Winston and Strawn was recently sued by a small Boston firm over Winston’s “paraphrasing” (cribbing, copying, plagiarizing, stealing, copyright infringing) a brief of theirs in a case in which both firms were counsel. I was intrigued, as plagiarism has been something of a hot topic since Harvard’s president Claudine Gay recently resigned her leadership role there after charges of plagiarism. It’s also an issue I have dealt with over the last 20 years of on-and-off teaching legal writing. It’s complicated.

When I was teaching, I warned my students on the first day of class that in the legal academy, plagiarism is usually grounds for suspension or expulsion. Even if you beat the charges, you’ll have to relitigate the issue again during bar admission. My experience has been that the troika of disqualifying character and fitness issues are serious criminal conduct, severe financial problems and plagiarism.